


Hair and Straw

by WorryinglyInnocent



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: A Monthly Rumbelling, Dark Castle, F/M, Mutual Masturbation, NSFW, Voodoo dolls, enchanted forest, phantom touch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-29
Updated: 2016-09-29
Packaged: 2018-08-18 13:57:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8164331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WorryinglyInnocent/pseuds/WorryinglyInnocent
Summary: In the Dark Castle, Rumpelstiltskin teaches Belle about a particular type of magic, little realising that Belle has had an idea to put it to good use…
Written for the Monthly Rumbelling prompt "Voodoo Doll and Phantom Touch".





	

**Hair and Straw – A Monthly Rumbelling Fic**

**Rated:** NC-17

**Prompt:** Voodoo Doll and Phantom Touch

**Summary:** In the Dark Castle, Rumpelstiltskin teaches Belle about a particular type of magic, little realising that Belle has had an idea to put it to good use…

**Word Count:** 3964

**===========**

**Hair and Straw**

Belle could tell when her relationship with Rumpelstiltskin had turned a definitive corner. Well, relationship was probably the wrong word to use. Friendship? No, it was a little bit more than that. The stage between a friendship and a relationship, perhaps? Belle smiled as she ascended the steps into Rumpelstiltskin’s tower. Whatever this next stage of whatever the interaction between them could be called was, she had the distinct impression that he didn’t even realise that it was evolving. Or if he did, then he would stringently deny it when asked and make her go and redo all the laundry as punishment for her perceived impertinence and his embarrassment at being made to confront his feelings head on.

There were feelings there, Belle was sure of it. She’d been sure of it ever since he’d first allowed her to come up into the tower. It had seemed like an off the cuff remark, that she should bring him tea in the tower that particular afternoon, but in the months that she had been working in the Dark Castle, Rumpelstiltskin had always come down out of the tower for tea. It was the one place that she had never set foot, but now the door was always unlocked and she was free to come and go there as she pleased, just as she was everywhere else within the castle and its grounds. Although the invitation was seemingly carefree, Belle knew the amount of trust that he had put in her now and she knew that it had been a conscious decision on his part to let her into this most sacrosanct part of his domain.

She had been bringing him tea in the tower for about a week now, and she felt that she had learned more about him in this one week than she had done in the entire rest of their time together. Belle balanced the tea tray on one hand as she climbed up, needing the other for grip on the handrail as she took the steps carefully. She’d seen Rumpel race up and down these stairs like a lightning bolt, but she didn’t trust herself not to fall and break her neck if she did that.

“You’re late,” Rumpel’s voice said as she climbed the last few steps and entered the room at the top. “Teatime is quarter past three, dearie. It is now twenty-five minutes to four.”

He did not look up as she put the tea tray down on his work bench beside him, merely gesturing flamboyantly at the clock on the wall. Belle rolled her eyes.

“You know, if you came down for tea like you always used to, then I wouldn’t have to spend so much time bringing it up all those steps,” she pointed out, settling herself at the table opposite him and pouring out two cups.

“Ah yes, but if I did that, then you wouldn’t have the opportunity to ask about all my little knick-knacks, would you?”

He finally gave her his full attention, a little smirk on his face as he took up his tea. Belle huffed, but she did have to concede his point. This room was such a treasure trove of amazing and wonderful things and powerful dark magic. A small part of her mind told her that she should really be afraid, but rather than fear, all Belle felt was fascination.

“I swear I get no work done at all whenever you come in here,” Rumpelstiltskin continued to complain, but there was something in his eyes that was hiding a smile and Belle knew that he didn’t mean it. “It’s all “Rumpel, what’s this? Rumpel, what does this do?” and all the while I have to stop you from touching things you shouldn’t and bringing yourself to an early end.”

She gave him a smirk of her own above her teacup. “I think you enjoy it really, you know.”

Rumpel just gave an emphatic sniff in response, but he did not contradict her assessment. Belle liked learning about all the things in the tower; she liked learning in general and Rumpel was an excellent teacher, however begrudging he claimed his explanations to be. She had found out so much since she had been allowed up here, and she knew that Rumpel enjoyed her newfound knowledge and the ability to have a conversation with her about these strange new topics. Their chatter at the dinner table of an evening, once awkward and stilted, now flowed with a newfound enthusiasm as Belle asked about all the new potions and lotions and spells that he had been working on all day, and the deals that he intended to use them for. She no longer felt any fear at asking what had caused a particular crash or bang from the tower on any given day, and Rumpel was usually more than happy to tell her and share the unexpected good results of what could have been a disaster of catastrophical proportions.

She looked down at the items scattered across the workbench today; it seemed that he never worked on the same project for more than two days together and she wondered if he’d always had an attention deficit or if it had come with the territory of the Dark One. With such an incredibly sharp mind at work all the time, she thought he couldn’t be blamed for flitting around like a demented moth who’d spent too long in the ale barrel. All the same, her ordered mind was itching to organise it all like she had organised the rest of the castle; although her presence was allowed and (dare she think it) welcomed, this was one place where Rumpelstiltskin had expressly forbidden her to clean, citing everything in the place as too dangerous to fiddle with unsupervised.

Presently, the potion brewing apparatus by the window began to bubble violently and Rumpel sprang up to go and see to it before it could boil over, but not before shoving the last cookie in his mouth. Belle was left alone at the workbench, and she turned her attention to a little pile of straw oddments in one corner. They were too small to be useful for him to spin into gold, and she wondered what they were doing there. Surreptitiously, she inched a little bit closer to them and delicately poked about in the pile.

He was making what looked to be a human figure out of the oddments. It was not complete; there was a severe lack of limbs, but it was complete enough to be recognisable as a head and a torso. She picked it up, turning it this way and that. It reminded her of the corn dolls that she had made with her mother back when she was a child at harvest time.

“Rumpel,” she began, once the potion appeared to be under control again and Rumpelstiltskin was making his way back towards his cup of tea. “What’s this?”

Rumpel glanced up at her and took in the little half-made doll.

“That’s a voodoo doll,” he said airily, as if such things were commonplace and Belle ought to be familiar with them.

“A voodoo doll?” She had heard the term before, or at least come across it somewhere, but her mind was still drawing a blank.

“A voodoo doll, yes,” Rumpelstiltskin said patiently, taking the little doll from her and beginning to weave another piece of straw into it to form the basis of an arm. “Woven out of straw and hair from your chosen victim, and tada! A wonderful conduit for an actual person.”

“So once it’s complete, what do you do with it?” Belle asked.

“Well, that’s easy.” Rumpelstiltskin picked up a pin from the workbench and stabbed it violently into the doll’s head. “Pain! Agony! Terrible and awful death!”

Belle recoiled slightly with a shudder, and Rumpel chuckled. “Don’t worry, my dear, this one has no hair in it yet, and I don’t use them for such unsophisticated ends.”

“What do you use them for, then?” Belle asked.

Rumpelstiltskin paused. “Annoying people, mainly,” he admitted. Belle gave a soft huff of laughter. Never had the term ‘needling someone’ been so appropriate.

“I’m surprised you don’t have one of me,” she said.

Rumpel grinned wickedly. “Who’s to say that this isn’t destined for you?” he asked, his voice low and if Belle didn’t know better, inviting. “I’m not short of your hairs, that’s for certain.” He wrinkled his nose. “You do shed rather. I keep finding long hairs all over my laboratory.”

“No different to me finding yours in the kitchen of a morning,” Belle retorted. “I know when you’ve been raiding the cookie jar in the small hours because you’ve got so wrapped up in something up here that you forgot to come down for dinner.”

The exchange gave her an idea, and she looked down again at the little doll where Rumpel put it back onto the work bench next to the straw oddments.

“Does any kind of touch transfer to the person, or only a violent one?” she asked.

“No, anything would do it,” Rumpel said, distracted by the potion in the window which had begun to boil again. “But this is dark magic we’re talking about, Belle, and it’s usually used for dark purposes.”

“I know. I was just wondering if it could, in theory, be used in a different way.”

He turned from the potion and raised an eyebrow at her. “Why would you want to use it for anything else?” he asked.

Belle shrugged. “Like you said. Teasing people.”

More specifically, teasing him. She wasn’t about to let him know that, though.

“Can anyone make one?” she asked. “I mean, it’s just straw and hair, isn’t it? There’s no real magic in it.”

Rumpelstiltskin did not reply, because at that moment the potion chose to explode violently, sending the man flying backwards and sending Belle into hiding under the workbench. The room was filled with thick red smoke and she decided that it was probably best to beat a tactical retreat in case the fumes were dangerous.

She stopped just long enough to grab a handful of the straw fragments though. There was definitely food for thought there.

X

As she had suspected, Belle found out quickly from the magical theory books in the library that one did not have to be a magician in order to make this potently magical item. All that was required was a straw model in a vague likeness of the intended victim, and a hair. She had the straw, and she had the hair: all she needed to do was to put them together.

Belle had made many corn dollies in her time, but somehow making the voodoo doll was not as easy as she remembered. Perhaps the straw was different to the corn ears she had previously used; or perhaps her mother and the kitchen maids had given her more help than she remembered. The fact that she had to hide what she was doing from Rumpel wasn’t really helping. Given his proclivity to pop up anywhere at any time without warning, she’d quickly become an expert in hiding her work between the pages of whichever book she happened to be reading at the time. Not that she was actually reading any of them, but since she ordinarily devoured novels at a rate of one every day or two, she felt that Rumpel might become suspicious if it seemed like she’d been on page two-hundred and thirteen of the same book for a week.

Looking down now at the completed product, she was having doubts as to whether it would work. It didn’t exactly _look_ a lot like Rumpel, but then again, it was quite hard to get a good representation out of straw. She supposed that it didn’t have to be incredibly anatomically accurate, just as long as all the relevant parts were there. She felt herself blushing as she looked down at the piece of straw protruding between the stubby legs. She probably would not have the nerve to go as far as that in her plan, but as she had already established, it was all about the relevant parts. Not that she had ever seen that particular relevant part, but Rumpelstiltskin’s leathers were not the most loose-fitting of clothing, and Belle had a very good imagination. (Not that the trousers left much for her to be imagining, if she was honest, although no-one would hear her complaining about that...)

The hair had been procured and inserted, and all that was left was to try it out. It was almost time for dinner, and Belle wanted to be able to see Rumpel’s reactions when she tested the doll in case something had gone wrong somewhere along the line. This was the perfect opportunity.

She had read that any touch to the doll, if it was to be transmitted, had to be made with an object, or else every time the person handled the little straw conduit the victim would feel it. To that end, she taken one of the smooth wooden pegs she used to hang up the laundry. She could use that to touch the doll gently, with no fear of transmitting any pain from sharp points or edges. It was time for a test run – provided of course that Rumpel did indeed come down for dinner rather than getting carried away reworking the potion that had blown up so spectacularly the week before and forgetting that it was a meal time.

She was in luck; he was already sitting in his place at the head of the table when she entered with their plates, the doll and peg hidden in the pocket of her apron. She waited until Rumpel was absorbed in his food before carefully taking them out and setting them on her lap out of his sight under the table. They had started having dinner together comparatively early on in her stay in the Dark Castle, around the time that she had stopped sleeping in the dungeon and been gifted the library; when she had ceased to be a servant and truly become more of a caretaker. It had been awkward at first, and Belle had often rushed from the room to get away from the uncomfortable silence, neither quite knowing how to initiate the conversation that now came so easily to them. As time had gone on, she had moved from sitting at the foot of the long table opposite him to now sitting beside him, making the meals far more cosy and less formal than they had begun and allowing the gentle teasing that fuelled their relationship to blossom.

“How’s the dragon’s blood potion coming along?” she asked mildly, hoping that she didn’t sound too suspicious. “Any more explosions?”

“No, but I’m sure it will only be a matter of time.” Rumpelstiltskin seemed remarkably cheerful at the prospect of another conflagration almost blowing up his tower. “I’ve discovered some really very interesting…”

He trailed off as Belle gently ran the end of the peg down the doll’s cheek, and he frowned, knife and fork stilling.

“Go on,” she encouraged, stroking the other cheek. Still confused, Rumpel shook his head several times, as if trying to shake off whatever invisible force was touching him. “Are you all right, Rumpel?” she asked.

“Yes, I…”

Belle ran the peg down the doll’s neck and chest, and Rumpel shifted in his seat. Belle did it again, trying to gauge the reaction, and she watched him squirm under the phantom touch. His breath hitched, and as his eyes flickered over to her she tried to look as innocent as she could. There was a darkness in the depth of his gaze, a lustful glint that she had not seen there before. Once more for luck, she stroked his chest with the wood; watching his eyes narrow with pleasure she knew that she was on the right track, that he was enjoying her ministrations, and she allowed herself a small smile.

Rumpelstiltskin shook himself and fixed his eyes on Belle.

“I was wondering where all my straw oddments kept going,” he muttered.

“Were you?” she asked innocently, allowing the peg to drift a little further down his chest towards his abdomen. Rumpel’s breath hitched again, and if Belle didn’t know better, she’d say that he gave a small squeak as she transferred the gentle pressure to the inside of his thighs.

“You know that two can play at that game, my dear,” he growled, once coherent speech had returned to him. “I did warn you that you shed enough hairs in my laboratory.”

Belle just smiled. Perhaps this was what she had been counting on from the beginning when she had first begun this venture.

“I know you did,” she said pleasantly, and she inched the peg up the straw thigh, tantalisingly close to where his legs met.

Rumpel dropped his knife, sending gravy splattering across the tablecloth as he was forced to grip the edge of the table to keep control. Belle took pity on him and stopped touching the doll, allowing him a moment of respite in which to snap his fingers and summon another little strawman. Belle could see that this doll had long strands of woollen hair in rich dark brown, the same colour as her own.

Unlike Belle, however, Rumpelstiltskin was completely overt in his tactics, laying the doll on the table and using the handle of his fork to gently touch her cheek. It was a warm touch that she felt against her skin, as if Rumpel’s own warm fingers were caressing her. There was a finesse in the way he touched her so lightly and delicately, and Belle found herself leaning in to the hand that wasn’t there. Rumpelstiltskin gave a satisfied smile, and Belle scowled at him. He hadn’t won so easily, and she returned the peg to the doll, stroking up and down the inside of his thighs again.

He almost dropped his fork as well, but saved it in time, and used the end to run a line down the centre of her chest, between her breasts. She could feel the fingertip tracing down her skin, pressing into her cleavage where her bodice pushed her bust together. All of a sudden, as he traced under the swell of each of her breasts in turn, her dress felt far too tight, and glancing down she saw her chest heaving. She hadn’t known before she began her quest just how intoxicating the touch of these phantom fingers could be, and she couldn’t help a gasp of desire as she felt them brush over her nipples. Belle glanced over at Rumpel; she wasn’t touching him at all, but his breathing was as heavy as hers, his eyes never leaving her as he continued to trace patterns over her breasts, watching her reactions and repeating every touch that made her vocalise her pleasure.

It was all too much, and Belle’s free hand plucked at the strings of her bodice, loosening it as she panted. Looking across at Rumpel, she could see the faint sheen of sweat forming on his skin; it felt good to know that he was just as affected as she was by this little game of cat and mouse that they were playing, using the dolls to give touches that they had not been confident enough to give each other in the flesh.

Now that they were both on the same page, so it seemed, Belle felt a little boldness creeping over her, and she pressed the wooden peg gently but decisively against the straw between her doll’s legs. The result was even better than she expected. Rumpelstiltskin gave a strangled exclamation and his free hand flew to his crotch, palming his now obvious erection. She stroked him again, watching him squeeze the bulge almost unconsciously, his hand working with her ghostly touch in sync. After a few more touches, Belle removed the peg, and met Rumpel’s eyes, dark and blown with arousal. She knew hers would be exactly the same, and she raised an eyebrow, challenging him to match her in their strange little battle.

Rumpel’s smile was Mephistophelean as he traced the fork handle up her left leg, achingly slowly from her ankle to her knee and onwards, and he brought it to rest against the very apex of her thighs. The warmth already building in her core grew stronger and stronger with the pressure of the phantom touch, and Belle wriggled in her chair, trying to get friction against the places she needed most. The ghostly fingers were rubbing her in little circles, but never quite reaching where she needed them to be. The dolls were too small for that level of finesse, and their touching implements too unwieldy. Rumpel couldn’t touch her where she was aching for him, couldn’t slip a finger into her dripping entrance like she had done to herself so many times in the dead of night thinking of him. She couldn’t cup him and feel the weight of his balls in her hand or close her fingers around his shaft.

Before she knew what she was doing, Belle had pushed back her chair a little and rucked up her skirt, sliding a hand under the hem and down into her drawers, pressing her finger against her swollen pink pearl. Rumpel groaned at the sight, and for a moment the doll lay forgotten beside his plate as he watched the outline of her hand moving beneath the white cotton of her underwear, watching the damp patch on her gusset increase, wetting the fabric so that he could almost see through it.

She was close, so close, Rumpel’s teasing with the doll had brought her a long way, but there was still something else that she needed. Something more. Her other hand came up to her bodice, pulling at the strings and the neckline of her chemise beneath until one pert breast sprang free, the cool air of the room pebbling her already sensitive nipple into a hard, dusky bud. Rumpelstiltskin licked his lips, and a moment later Belle felt unseen fingers touching her chest, circling around and around her breast and flicking at her aching nipple.

It was that extra touch from Rumpel that tipped her over the edge, inner walls fluttering around her fingers as she rode her own hand out to orgasm.

“Oh… _Rumpel_ ,” she moaned. “Oh _yes_.”

She closed her eyes as the pleasure raced through her veins, panting as she gradually came down from the high. She couldn’t feel Rumpel’s phantom touch on her breast any longer, and as she withdrew her fingers from her soaked drawers, she saw that he had also taken matters into his own hands, breeches unlaced and fist curled around his freed cock, pumping hard. With shaking hands, Belle reached down to pick up the doll where it had fallen from her lap in the throes of her climax. It seemed only fair to help him along a little, since he had done so wonderfully with her. She stroked the gap between his thighs, matching the rhythm of his hand on his dick and watching as his head lolled back with pleasure, a heartfelt groan escaping his lips. Emboldened, she increased the pressure, and with a garbled shout, Rumpel spilled himself, sticky ropes of white splattering over his hand and shirt.

For a long time, the dolls lay forgotten as their owners took in the sight of each other: panting, perspiring, half-undressed at the dining table and utterly consumed by lust.

They would definitely be doing this again.

Perhaps without the aid of magic, next time.


End file.
